Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels Put Students First with Nation’s Broadest Generative AI Moratorium in Schools

What You Should Know

New York City is temporarily banning student-facing generative AI in public schools through eighth grade—covering roughly 600,000 students—while the city studies how AI affects learning. At the same time, NYC is introducing AI literacy courses for high school students and allowing limited, supervised AI use in some programs. The message is less “AI is bad” and more “we need to understand what role AI should play in education before putting it everywhere.”

Why should educators care? Institutions don’t have to choose between unrestricted AI access and an outright ban. They can create environments where AI use is intentional, age- and context-appropriate, and aligned with learning goals. Typerighter gives institutions tools to set clear boundaries around AI use while providing transparency into the writing process—helping educators make thoughtful decisions about when AI supports learning and when it gets in the way.

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and Schools Chancellor Kamar H. Samuels today announced a moratorium on student-facing generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) use in schools, alongside a new screen time policy, a decision that will impact nearly 600,000 public school students, or two-thirds of the system’s total enrollment. The policy establishes a one-year moratorium, effective in the 2026-2027 school year, on student-facing generative AI for children in 2-K through 8th grade. It also introduces twice-yearly AI critical thinking modules for high schoolers, limited AI pilots for a small number of high school classrooms and age-appropriate screen time restrictions.

“Children need teachers and human connection in order to learn and grow. They need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with educators and wrestle with tough problems on their own,” said Mayor Mamdani. “The tech industry wants us to believe that A.I.-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary. We do not see it that way. That’s why we’re implementing a moratorium on generative AI for students in 2-K through 8th grade and spending the next year studying the impacts of this technology.” [Read the full article.]